A visit to my office has evolved into something akin to the road to Lourdes. Pilgrims arrive red-eyed and defeated, faces etched with misery, searching for a way out of a trap.
The standard story is some variant of the following: You are either out of work or loathe your work. You have $180k in loans. You have either no income or an impermanent income paid to you in exchange for any joy life might offer. You see no hope.
Let me spell out the critical element here: You are one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in debt.
Just to fully drive the point home: that’s bankruptcy-proof debt.
You’ve yelled at your parents, but it’s not really their fault. You’ve wept and wailed and gotten drunk and stoned and consumed a script of Xanax. You’ve tried sleeping and pretending you don’t have to wake up.
Then comes the pilgrimage. Perhaps I can heal with a laying on of hands.
Okay, here’s the feedback I’ll receive for what I’ve written so far:
You’re exaggerating. You’re bringing me down. Law isn’t so bad. I love law.
Yeah, well good for you. I’m not exaggerating.
It’s their own damn fault. No one made them go to law school.
Yes. They. Did. Stop kidding yourself – the entire system is engineered to lead smart, conscientious kids exactly where it leads them. And get off it already with the no sympathy/blame the victim routine.
How bad are things? How many times can I pose that (at this point rhetorical) question?
Young lawyers look me in the eye and ask, how am I supposed to carry on with my life? What they mean is – how is one supposed to live a life worth living – a life that satisfies one as a human being – trapped in the hell of law and law school loans?
Sometime, I ask them what they would be doing with their lives, if they didn’t have loans. Here are some of their answers:
Teach yoga and healthy nutrition.
Play drums.
Become a park ranger.
Design clothes.
Open a bluegrass bar.
Write a science fiction trilogy.
Open an antiques store.
Become a family therapist.
Work in a bakery.
Study Marine Biology.
These answers shouldn’t surprise anyone. Young lawyers – like most young people – yearn to take a risk on something mad, creative and unknown. To learn something new. To follow a passion. But you can’t pursue those things – or, at least, it’s darn tough – when a bank is dunning you for a missed interest payment.
What can you do to escape the debt trap? I keep fielding that question. I still don’t have a decent answer.
You could try to find a day job – something bearable that will permit you to pay the minimum on your loans for the next 30 years, and still live a meaningful life. Can it be done? Maybe. It tends to boil down to concentrating on hobbies while working your way through a string of mind-numbing legal gigs (often doc review.) That might work, so long as mind-numbing legal gigs (often doc review) remain available.
Some of my clients reject the day job route. They insist the loans can never be paid – to do so would consume a lifetime, and in the attempt, you’d lose years better spent building a meaningful existence. I’ve met lawyers who plan to move abroad where the banks can’t find them. Others talk about going underground – staying in the USA, but relocating with no forwarding address so they can work under the table or using an assumed name.
It’s amazing, but true – the law school loan nightmare is turning American kids into the equivalent of undocumented aliens. Remember those “Dream Act” kids, the American 20-somethings who, after living in the USA since infancy, have to hide in the shadows thanks to vicious anti-immigrant laws? They’ve got company – young lawyers hiding from banks thanks to vicious bankruptcy laws.
For better or worse, I’m a psychotherapist. I’m not an expert in hiding from governments or banks. I have no advice to provide in that department.
So, the pilgrims ask – what’s left? What can I do that might make a difference?
In this respect, they sound like my online comment-writers, who are typically blunter:
All you do is natter on and on – bashing law. You’re like a broken record. If it’s really so bad, then how about providing answers?
Everyone wants an answer.
Well, okay. Here’s an answer. I call it the “It Gets Worse” Project.
Dan Savage responded to the suicides of LGBT kids by creating the “It Gets Better” Project. You post YouTube videos telling kids what they need to know: if you survive the homophobic hell of high school, it gets better – being LGBT can be fun.
The “It Gets Worse” Project performs the same service for young people at risk of career-suicide. You post YouTube videos telling kids what they need to know: if you survive the hell of law school, it gets worse – debt-slavery sucks.
Is this project going to help you? No, it’s too late for that. It might make you feel better, but the plan is to protect young people’s lives from the law school loan racket. That’s something. It could make a difference.
Ready to post a video?
It wouldn’t take much – you know what to do. For about five minutes, you tell the truth.
Do I expect a lawyer to take that risk? I’m not betting the farm on it. A proposal for forthright candor in a public forum appears unlikely to take the legal world by storm. Look up “lawyer” in the dictionary. The entry reads: “risk-averse.”
Still… it could happen. Here’s why: Sometimes you have nothing to lose. That’s when the impossible happens, and change becomes inevitable.
Last year I told a guy at the Occupy Wall Street protest I admired his courage for camping in the cold to make a point about social inequality. His reply said everything: “I haven’t got a choice, friend.” He believed our society was way off course, and only way to correct it was to be where he was, doing what he was doing.
That conversation took me back to the 1980’s, and the ACT-UP protests. Americans were dying of AIDS by the tens of thousands, while the government mostly ignored it. (Ronald Reagan memorably refused to utter the word, “AIDS,” for most of his presidency.) For better or worse, my friends in ACT-UP had nothing to lose. They refused to die quietly, and insisted on telling the truth, in hopes of saving lives.
When you have nothing to lose, you stop being so damned risk-averse.
There’s a growing population of lawyers with nothing to lose. It’s not like there are jobs out there for kids with so-so grades from so-so law schools with no experience and eighteen months of unemployment on their resume (which describes the majority of young lawyers.) Maybe you’re damned if you do…but you’re already damned if you don’t, so who gives a damn anyway?
Ergo, let’s do something. Let’s prevent more naïve young people from falling victim to the same scam that left you in this mess.
If you lack the chutzpah to post a personal video – how about a collective one, like those “corporate” videos inspired by “It Gets Better”? How about a “Survivors of Sullivan & Cromwell” It Gets Worse video? (Let me know – I’ll be there.) Maybe “Unemployed Doc Reviewers of Los Angeles” or “Unemployed Graduates of New York Law School”? Maybe the “We Owe Over Two Hundred Grand Club”? Use your imagination.
If someone somewhere summons the moxie to post an “It Gets Worse” video, the movement could gather steam. That could lead to further direct action against the fraud being perpetrated by law schools. I envision tuition strikes, mass drop-outs, maybe an “Occupy Law School” movement. The little Michael Moore in me would glow with pride.
I’d settle for a video. A voyage of a thousand miles begins with a single footstep…yadda yadda. C’mon, people – we’re talking about crying “Stop!” before another youngster blithely signs another loan for another sixty grand and in the process wrecks his future.
You did everything you were told and played it safe. Look where it got you. Take a risk for a change – speak the truth.
========
This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.
If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning
I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy
(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.)
I love it.
I’d also like to see a world where miserable lawyers band together, form their own firms (that aren’t miserable), and provide a genuine opportunity for success without the insanity.
I’d love to see a law firm assembled where you don’t make it through the interview process unless you tell them the real truth about your old law firm.
I’ve often thought of starting my own business/law firm, but after seeing what being without a job has done for many of my former colleagues, I don’t know if I have what it takes to fire people unless they did something deplorable.
If you lack teh ability to get a descent job, I think your chances of starting any business, specially a law firm, are dismal.
Trust me, I tried it twice. If you lack family connections or inheritance, you already have a handicap. Do not make it worse trying to go solo.
Like button clicked.
And what do you say to the kids who’ve wanted to be lawyers for their whole lives, the kids who have nonetheless incessantly been told NOT to pursue a career in law? Do you tell them to abandon their dream – it simply does not exist anymore? This is miserable because I am one of these kids, but I guess there really isn’t any choice is there?
You eliminate a lot of your problems if you don’t take out student loans.
The sad reality is also that the dream is called a dream because it more often than not does not come true. Otherwise it would be called a reality. While it may be a dream for you to do fancy “lawyer things,” I doubt your dream also involved $180k of non-dischargable debt and endless document review jobs.
I have a hard time believing that you dreamed your whole life about being a lawyer, because, for most of it, I’m sure you had no idea what they actually did. I’m guessing you really dreamed about the trappings–the fancy car, the wad of cash, and the poncy school sweatshirt (not, of course, that you would actually wear a sweatshirt). Or maybe you just thought it would be a quirky place to work, like on TV.
On the slim chance that this life-long dream was actually founded on anything based in reality, well, that’s just sad. Aim high, kid.
Why do you want to be a lawyer? Do you find the law interesting or have a profound personal reason (e.g. working for a particular group)? If so, I’d say go for it (but try to be smart, minimize your costs to the extent possible). If you don’t know enough about the law to know if you find it interesting, then in my view you don’t have a good reason to want to be a lawyer.
I genuinely wanted to be a lawyer, finding the law very interesting even before I went to law school (e.g. I read about it, took a high school course in it, did a mock trial competition for school students, etc.), and fortunately went to law school at a time and place where I did not have large debt (I’m a U.S. citizen but grew up in Canada, so went to non-ABA but good and much less-expensive since Canadian resident, Canadian law school, I’m called in NY which like California and a few others doesn’t require ABA law school). (WARNING there are many issues with going to non-ABA law school, some NY firms used to recruit from some Canadian law schools in better economic times but now?)
The vast majority of my fellow students, however, were NOT interested in law. They had family pressures to be a professional and/or a lawyer specifically, had good marks in undergrad and didn’t know what else to do, wanted the money/prestige of being a lawyer, etc. I’d estimate that at most – at most – 10% genuinely found the law interesting and/or had a profound personal reason (e.g. becoming a family lawyer because of what they’d gone through in divorce) for becoming a lawyer.
If you’re one of the minority then as I said, go for it in as smart (cheap) a way as possible. Ironically, as much as I enjoyed the practice of IP litigation (I love being in court and even written arguments) that was a minority of my work and the business of law took over and I left. Fortunately I was able to find a position in engineering (despite having spent years in law – it was difficult and I was doing some document review until I found a good position!) which I find interesting and enjoyable – and I’m permitted to maintain a small part-time law practice, so that given my past litigation experience I’m (ethically) able to maintain a few active legal files. But I got lucky and had an undergrad degree in engineering and found an engineering position in which my legal experience was a plus.
I went the chemical engineering/law route without an interest in either area.
I cringe at the thought of getting a job in engineering. Law’s bad enough, but having to deal with engineering all day? Ouch.
And they love to toss you out when you get older and replace you with younger, cheaper engineers.
I’d tell you the same thing that I tell everyone who approaches me about attending law school. Law school isn’t going anywhere. So many of us are made to feel like we have to trudge straight through school from kindergarten through grad school. The reality is that the people I know who were the most focused in law school and who knew what they really wanted were people who had done something else for a few years first.
I know the job market is bad for undergraduates as well, but generally you have not yet incurred the enormous debt that will follow you after law school. Do something that you enjoy for a few years. Work for a non-profit, join the Peace Corps, or get a job in an unrelated field. After that, if you still want to attend law school and it truly is your dream, do it. Just do it with a few years of outside experience and some money in your savings account.
FF, always pursue your dream!! I went in with eyes wide open! I was told by basically everyone I knew NOT to go into law. So I knew what I was getting myself into. But, as a kid I always knew this was what I wanted to do. And, bizarrely, things have worked out. If you really want to do it, you have a choice; and knowing these facts it’s an educated one. Don’t give up on your dream…What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore– And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over– like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Sorry I just have way too much time on my hands right now, as my boyfriend is moving house… X
Teach yoga and healthy nutrition.
Play drums.
Become a park ranger.
Design clothes.
Open a bluegrass bar.
Write a science fiction trilogy.
Open an antiques store.
Become a family therapist.
Work in a bakery.
Study Marine Biology.
There is no reasonable expectation of making any significant amount of money in any of these fields. If these people don’t care about making money, and are expecting to make basically no money, then why in the world are they not signing up for IBR, paying a tiny portion of their loans for 25 years (or 10 in the case of the park ranger) and then living their perfect life. Though I imagine that the folks that open the bluegrass bar and the antiques store would assume far more debt to get those enterprises off the ground than it costs to go to law school. I guess because it is easier to whine about it.
I think you might be missing a greater point here. You can become very rich – in a variety of ways – pursuing any of these fields.
You are missing my point, I think. In most (not all) cases, if these folks wish to pursue those fields then there is already a system in place to make the loans less of an issue. According to the IBR calculator, if you are a yoga teacher making $40k a year (which is perhaps generous) and you have or had $180k in debt, your monthly payment would be under $300. Yeah, that sucks a little more than paying $0, but it’s not preventing you from teaching yoga to your heart’s content. If you’re pulling down $30k working in a bakery, you’re looking at $150.
b’s point is that if you sign up for income based repayment, you can make a relatively low income, pay a very small percentage of that in loans, and get the balance forgiven after some period of time (as noted, shorter if you work for the government).
The larger point is that (a) some people like the law* and (b) there are lots of ways to “follow your passion” even when you have student loans. (One option: default). And the notion that everyone who designs clothes is neither indebted nor unhappy is naive at best and terribly misleading at worst (if you prompt someone to leave law to design clothes, only to find himself saddled with debt and unhappiness in the new job).
*I suppose Will would say everyone who likes the law is an asshole, so he’s accounted for (a) already.
It is my understanding that IBR is not necessarily available for private loans. People who are in the 180k debt range have more private loans than not. So while I wish it was as simple as you say to escape, it is not.
Haha. Off the main point of your article, but I think you misunderstood the OWS guy who you talked to.
When he said he was camping out cuz he didn’t have a choice, he meant he was homeless. He literally didn’t have a choice.
Yes…so how was I misunderstanding his situation?
Will, for what percentage of law students is going to law school a bad idea? Would you say 80 percent, 90 percent? Lower? Where are you on this? And don’t cop out with some bullshit about how it is different for everyone. I want a number. please.
He’s not going to be able to provide an answer to your question because he only deals with the unhappy people.
From a purely economic point of view, I can’t even answer your question, and thinking about debt is one of my hobbies.
We would have to assume a lot of things about debt levels, salary levels, employment levels, and tenure. I haven’t seen anything out there in one place that would make that easy.
Instead of a specific number or percentage, how about answering this question with a rubric:
It’s a bad idea to go to law school for every person who has to work at a job they hate for X number of years just to pay off the cost of having gone to law school, and gets little or no further incremental benefit out of their degree once they leave that job they hate.
well then jonlaw2 what is your number…don’t cop out
All you really need is about one public law school for each state and, for premium services, the top 15 private law schools. Every other law school should be shut down. In all, we are talking about 55 schools. There are about 200 law schools in the U.S., so I would say the over supply is about 75%.
I meant “top 5 private law schools,” not 15.
There are too many law schools, and thus, too many law school graduates for the market to absorb. The reason for this is because many universities (public and private) have seen professional schools as cash cows since the early-1970s. These universities were in desperate need of money to fund their less-popular undergraduate programs and assumed a two-for-one funding solution was in order: (1) ever-increasing tuition from eager law students, and (2) alumni contributions from successful lawyers.
Today, law schools are feeling the pinch of dropping alumni contributions, particularly the TTT law schools. So what do they do? They simply increase law school tuition to make up for the shortfall. Unfortunately, it’s a vicious cycle. Higher tuition means higher debt loads, which in turn means lower contributions from cash-strapped alumni. Kind of like the old joke “the beatings will continue until morale improves around here.”
or you could fifty law schools for each state and then one major national university in DC or NY for the smartest. The STTTates can supply crim and fam law jerkoffs and the national law school can handle the heavy lifting. If you got rid of all the TTTs the value of a HY degree would plummet too because there would be less professor jobs. The whole purpose of TTT private schools is to employ HY grads. If you go to say Tulane and pay full freight you are a moron.
Actually, going to Tulane isn’t a good example, as it’s not a TTT. Going to NYLS, Loyola LA, Stetson, Golden Gate, Weidner, etc… are better examples.
no offense Samian but in this economy TTTulane is a TTT….I would much rather be an alligator hunter than a lawyer in Lousyanna….
I was just going to say that after twenty years practicing law, I would be happy to make such a video. You’re singing my song, Will. I have alienated a number of prospective law students who simply know things will be different for them. In my current place, I keep telling the younger lawyers to get their own clients, build their own practice, so they don’t have to be someone’s bitch when they are my age. They nod and smile, as if talking to a slightly dotty older relative.
I’m surprised by all the negativity coming from a therapist. I can say as someone at a top law school that most of my classmates could fall into 200 million dollar net worth and manage to find a way to be miserable, people who go to law school for some reason seem to collectively suffer from severe anxiety and depression BEFORE they enter. Law school is not a symptom but at best an exacerbation of these problems. That’s why this shrink has lawyers of all levels of success, lawyers are collective on average more miserable people (having studied business I am sure of this) and I often have to get a away from students to not be influenced by their negativity.
Psychologically, law school teaching us to be skeptical of everything can be dangerous to rush to the least risk averse worst case scenario of every possible situation (as that’s what cases are about). Overall though, while truly shit law schools are scams, judging almost all schools as scams is absurd. There is something majorly flawed about people judging the merits of law school based on three of the worst economic years of the last 70 and assuming the economy will stay like that forever, especially since the recruitment from C/O 2011-2013 has been night and day.
Uh, the entire period of 1995 through 2007 was a massive credit bubble. It was fake. The entire boom from dot-com to housing boom.
From an economic history perspective, we can expect a significant hangover for the next several years. The problem wasn’t the “last three years”. It was the last 20 years.
Oh, and the only reason that the economy is doing well right now is because we are running massive deficits, with some of the debt origination being funneled into unpayable student loan debts. Just wait until debt service payments on the national debt exceed annual tax revenues. That’s not a “worst case” scenario. It’s the current linear outcome.
That being said, I agree that law attracts miserable people and that law school makes things worse. But the happy credit bubble times aren’t coming back.
I loved law school. I hate being a lawyer. Your criticism of Will’s column on the misery of being a lawyer–when you are not even yet a lawyer–is naively adorable.
Your premise isn’t true, actually. There’s good research showing law students are normal/slightly above normal in any type of psychological functioning/coping you can measure before they start law school. Within three months, something like 20 or 30% of them are clinically depressed. And the number just goes up from there, as time goes on.
Not doubting you — just wondering if you have a citation for those statistics.
I loved law school too. Loved it. Came out and paid off my debt in three years. And hated every minute of being at a large firm. Loathed and detested it. I stuck it out for nearly 20 years even though I wasn’t debt handcuffed because I’m an idiot. I’m in house now and slightly happier, because the hours don’t suck, but I will regret until my dying day the decision to go to law school. Which I loved.
I don’t even have any loans, and I still wish I were dead. Welcome to biglaw – you are a loathsome pathetic drone; your life is a meaningless waste.
My loans are minimal, too. Yet I spend every day of my life, sitting in my desk chair wanting to die, because I can’t get another job to get the hell out.
There. Are. No. Jobs.
Exactly, dont underestimate the availability of other jobs. I got out of law and I cant even get a job serving coffee being too overqualified. There are no jobs. Someone on here said something about being a yoga teaching and earning $40k and a bakery assistant earning 30K, Really???
It is so difficult to water down a CV when you have been lawyering for years. And curse the dreaded application form, where you have to enter former job title, and salary.
Someone also something about being a park ranger, those jobs are like goldust.
Open a bar. Will says that will make you happy, and leave you debt-free forever!
I would love to open a bar. Then, instead of smiling at the aholes (interestingly, my spellcheck tried to change this to ‘whores’), I could throw them out.
Not necessarily debt-free, but whatever business debt you incur is dischargable in bankruptcy. Thus, if SHTF you can get a clean start. Not so for student loans.
Try to make reasonable inferences from the information you read, instead of just take everything at literal value.
You first, sir.
realistically, students can continue to take out all the loans they need to go to law school. The student debt bubble will burst and everyone knows these kids won’t be able to pay them back.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you, for putting into words the current horrific situation many young lawyers are facing.
When I was an undergrad, an academic counselor told me, “Don’t worry about the price of law school. Just go to the best school you get into and take out student loans. You’ll definitely be able to pay them off once you graduate.” What a cruel joke!
It’s scary how so many people (ie. academic counselors, parents, friends) feel so free to give advice when they have no idea what they are talking about. It would be like me going up to an Italian grandmother and telling her how to make lasagna. (sorry if this sounds racist, but I have used this example to good effect a few times.)
Unfortunately, there aren’t any answers to the problem. Wait, that’s not quite true. There actually ARE answers, but they are answers that law students deep in debt, pining for a future that never existed for them, don’t want to hear.
What are these answers?
Well, there is only one. Live with the choice you made. Stop blaming everyone else for the negative repercussions of your choice (e.g., debt, unhappiness, lack of fulfillment, etc….) and do something about it. This takes courage, but it is courage that millions of people show every day when faced with extraordinarily unpleasant circumstances.
Examples:
Single mom on food stamps works three jobs (one of them cleaning toilets) so she can give her kid(s) the chance she never had or may have squandered.
Divorced dad works three jobs (one of them digging ditches) to pay alimony and child support for a decade or more, perhaps even a lifetime (under California law).
Both of these examples show people living with the mistakes they may have made. Each carries a burden that likely exceeds the $180,000 in student loans.
Today’s TTT law school graduate has far more opportunities available than either of these two people. Open a firm and build a law practice, work for a public interest organization and seek loan forgiveness, work for the government and extend loan payments out to 30 years, etc…. However, if today’s TTT law school graduate doesn’t want to practice law, there are still opportunities for a meaningful career outside of the law.
Personal fulfillment has less to do with what one does for a living, than HOW one does it.
That TTT law grad presumably graduated from college and so he inherently is better off than the other two. That TTT grad went wrong though when he went to TTT. This blog is about warning TTT grads not to become TTT grads. But yes once you are a TTT grad you should do something about it to improve your lot and not whine. But that TTT grad actually just became closer to a ditch digger than if he had gone and done something else. I will say that there isn’t much else out there and that’s capitalism’s fault, not the law.
Agreed. This is why the lawsuits against two dozen or so TTT schools will ultimately fail, even if they are revived on appeal. The truth is out there, and it’s not even hidden. Anyone who has gone to law school since the the dot-com bubble burst, especially to a TTT school, should have known better.
Marine biology! I love it. Reminds me of one of my favorite interviews I ever published, with Tyler Coulson, the guy who quit his law job to walk across the country: http://thegirlsguidetolawschool.com/02/had-enough-time-to-quit-and-hit-the-open-road/. In his words, international law is the marine biology of law school. Who knew lawyers still wanted to be actual marine biologists, too!
For anyone feeling totally overwhelmed by debt, this interview is a great read. The money quote (no pun intended): “I love absolutely every minute of each of my days and I make absolutely no money. I will probably die in a poor house and be buried in a pauper’s grave, because I have student loans from law school. At my current income level—roughly $0/lifetime—I will never repay them. I do not care. Lawyers, at least at BigLaw, should remember this: You can own your time, and it might be the only thing you can truly own; don’t sell it all.”
Word.
Oh, thank god. I was hoping we’d get a plug for your blog.
Law scam doesn’t teach you shit. You spend two hours a day with the university employee- the Professor and then you are sent to read somewhere. Why do you need to even go there for that. Why waste the gas money? I think as Bill Gates has posited that the university as we know will die out. You don’t need to go there and do what you need to do unless of course practice skills are taught. Really the law school should have you there 9 to 5 practicing trial work.
Agreed. Practical skills are key, but then again, theory does have its place. This is why the third year of law school should be completely clinical in nature. Graduates need to come out of law school knowing how to practice law. European schools treat law as an undergraduate major, but then require clerking to gain practical experience before being admitted to the bar.
Yeah it is called socialism where you actually have to work towards the public good as opposed working to horde resources.
9 to 5? Where do you work Golem?
I run my own business in Miami importing all sorts of things from Latin America (not cocaine lol).
I inherited from my family after I washed out of big law. I am a family embarrassment.
I don’t suggest working 9 to 5. I suggest that the law schools actually engage with their students 9 to 5 rather than two hours a day. At night the student can prepare for the next day’s trial.
Law School lie about their employment statistics. Some Law Schools hire graduates for a few months so they can report them as employed and subsequently let them go. Other schools pay businesses and law firms to hire the graduates on a temporary or non-profit basis. Other schools use other methods to artificially inflate their employment statistics so they advertise a high employment out of law school percentage. This is a problem. Law Schools shouldn’t be allowed to dissemble about these kinds of facts when they’re expecting many students to incur over 100k of non-dischargeable debt. It really is like being trapped.
Ok so say that the law scams were more honest. Would people really stop going to law school? I doubt it. The same fucking slobs would go to the same fucking schools. I bet my fame on it.
I think many people would. There’s a strong correlation between law school applications and economic down turn. Lot of folks with MBAs or non technical under-graduate degrees apply for law school because they want to 1) delay entering a terrible market and 2) anticipate that a law degree will help them get a job based on the law school’s ’employment’ statistic.
I got laid off from big law last year, and started a new career as a programmer. After over a year of hard work, I am finally employed, as a ruby coder. I wrote a blog post on my story. http://coffeespoonsofcode.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/my-story-from-lawyer-to-ruby-hacker/
ABSOLUTELY SUPERB piece, Will. Thank you very much for posting this. Truly.
Not to sound too naive, but could we set up a program under which law school debt could be discharged in exchange for some period of public service— say $100,000 for 4 years? The public service could be teaching, medical work, construction (lawyers in construction?) My dad, a Depression kid, made his way through the CCC logging in WVa— he was grateful for the opportunity. His (and my mom’s) hard work made it possible for me to have a world of opportunity they never had.
Will is right: it only gets worse. You make partner at BigLaw and what is the biggest change in your day-to-day existence? In LA, you get a better parking space. That’s it. Or partnership may bring another change: because you’re still unsatisfied and life was supposed to be roses at this point, you decide the problem is your spouse and trade him/her in for a different face behind the newspaper.
Will is right: it only gets worse. You escape BigLaw and go in-house. Now you have only one client to please but, if you fail, you’re totally screwed. And failing to please may not have anything to do your performance. It may have to do with the greedy egomaniacs you work for whose bonuses are determined by how much they increase earnings per share and not by following the law.
And Alison is right: Your time is all you own. Don’t use it all at BigLaw or even practicing law if you don’t like it. Go for income based repayment.
I love it! I think I’m going to do it … if I ever get the time. Although I will, certainly, not include my face in the video.
Guestoptimist – hahaha! Who do you think pays people to do public service? There are no jobs in public service; very experienced lawyers are being laid off from public interest jobs that pay them next to nothing because funding of these organizations has decreased immensely. Besides, there already are deals where your debt is discharged after a certain number of years in public interest. But 4 years? You must be out of your mind. Try 15-35 (depending on each school’s programs). You know it’s sad when you have thousands of people begging for jobs that pay barely enough to live on and, perhaps, eventually, will help you get rid of your loans.
yeah, I realize the idea is laughable in the sense that it would need to be publicly funded (a la CCC) in an era in which only large banks get public funding when things go wrong (TARP).. I don’t know anything about programs that currently discharge debt after public interest service– perhaps you could explain how those work and why people don’t use them. I made up the $25k debt discharge per year, thinking that the program would also need to pay some sort of living stipend annually as well. But please let me know why this idea isn’t a bad alternative to people just “defaulting” or whatever the other alternatives are. Btw, perhaps I am “out of my mind” but there are historical examples of successful programs like this (e.g., CCC, PWA).
I work in BigLaw and I actually like it.
Sometimes, the hours are terrible – this month I will bill about 250 – but I like the work I do (renewable energy and project finance) and the people I work with. The first firm I worked at the partners weren’t so nice, and that makes a difference. I don’t have much control over my schedule, but I’ve learned to go with the flow. Last year I took two week and a half vacations after deals closed.
I don’t think I could, or want to, do this once I am married and have a family, but I’ve learned practical skills, have paid off my debt, and have $200K in the bank.
My friends who are doctors, architects, lawyers and even on the Phd track all bitch about their career choice as well. Every lawyer wishes they were a doctor, and all my doctor friends complain about is how they are 32 years old and won’t start making money for another 2 years at which point they will be twice as much in debt as any lawyer. My hippy uncle is depressed because he can’t support his kids and pays half his income on health insurance.
I graduated from the UK a few years ago and therefore debt free (my firm repaid my bar school fees at the start of my training with them, which is the norm in firms of a certain size) this means that my perception of law and being a lawyer is completely different than it would have been if I had had a huge loan.
I fairly enjoyed being a lawyer in the firm I trained at. People were nice and the work was ok. However, when the downturn lead to none of the qualifying trainees being kept on by my firm, the firm I ended up at was truly awful (and the pay was under what trainee managers at Starbucks in my city were getting). It made me realise that really didn’t like the practice of law all that much.
It is a shame really because, as someone has mentioned above, I loved studying law and still very much enjoy reading about it (but again, I have nothing to compare it with because I have only ever studied law) and it was really a shock to me to realise that the practice of law is so dull and stressful. At least when you study law you use your brain, not so much in practice.
If there was a video to be made, it would have to be one explaining to students what the job of a lawyer truly is. Actually, I agree with a point Will has made before, people should not be allowed to go to bar school (law school in the US) and therefore spend money, before having spent a year as a paralegal or legal assistant. If you like it then, then by all means go for it.
Fake Frog I am also UK based, 2 years ago I had enough and took a break from it, still fumbling with what to do though, I had this romantic notion of working in a cafe by the sea somewhere, I have struggled to exit law because there is a perception of being overqualified, never underestimate this, I’ve been doing law for 15 years so for me I dont get passed the application form stage of putting down last job title and salary etc etc.
Claire, I’m only half in law anymore. Even though I am my firm’s in-house counsel, the great majority the work I do is management and business development (I leave a lot of the legal stuff to my legal assistant who is incredibly keen on it…)
I think I was lucky in that I am still fairly inexperienced (2PQE) and therefore was not perceived too much as a solicitor when applying for other jobs. Also I worked extensively during my studies in a variety of areas completely unrelated to law so was able to use that at interview.
All that said if you really want to find a non-solicitor job you may have to make some sacrifices. Pay was one of them for me, I’ve actually gone down in salary every year for the last 3 years. First because I decided to take any solicitor’s job on qualification because there wasn’t much of a choice and then because I moved to China… Interestingly I got the interview for my current job because I tweaked my CV enough that the GM didn’t realise I was a lawyer until I mentioned it at the interview.
I would say take time to see what you want to do outside of law and just try different things. It will give you experience and should help at least determine what you don’t want.
In any case good luck with it!
Will, I comment a lot on this site. I think my comments are somewhat provocative but I don’t seem to get enough in terms of responses. This makes me very sad.
I got your back, Golem.
Have you thought about increasing the quality of your posts? Are you putting enough time into them? Have you tried to incorporate poetry into them to add asthetic value?
You could also link your posts to a business that you own.
For example, you could offer “GolemLoans – The Smart Way To Consolidate Your Law School Debt!” and talk about how you were able to reduce your loans by 80% by just ignoring them until they went away.
If you are still trying your best to create provocation and getting nowhere, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry that you are feeling sad. Life just seems to be sad sometimes.
Since this is a blog that is attached to Above the Law, I would expect that you would achieve a certain level of response, so I certainly understand your angst.
I’m sorry that I’m not much help. I wish I could give you a hug and make you feel better.
Will, I am not so sympathetic with these “smart, conscientious kids”. Before you place me in the “blame the victim” category, let me tell you about myself: I graduated at the bottom of my class from Pace Law School (a fourth-tier law school) with more than $100K in loans. Needless to say, no big-law for someone with my credentials. Yet, I managed to pay off my loans in a few years and now I am free from those shackles. How? I am a “smart, conscientious kid” and buckled down and believed in myself. Those “smart, conscientius kids” have their education and, well, their smarts that no one can take away. I say, believe in yourself and continuously work on your self-esteem. Yes, the system desperately needs reform, but it isn’t the system that is stopping you from reaching your true potential, it is YOU that is holding YOU back.
What planet are you from?
To be fair, most of those “alternative career plans” are TERRIBLE ideas.
They are terrible ideas are likely more of escapist fantasy than a real desire to do any of them.
I don’t think they would be terrible to the people who are actually pursuing them. Maybe the expected value of choosing one of those careers is not very high, but I think a large proportion of the people leaving law are people who are idealists and idealists aren’t really driven by what would generate the highest expected value. They’re driven by doing something that reflects who they are as individuals. So it’s really a terrible idea for them to stay the course or choose something that doesn’t reflect their values, because they won’t be driven and will therefore always be mediocre (or fired). That said, it’s probably not a terrible idea to stay the course long enough to pay off their loans, if they can manage to stay in the game.
It could be that I’m just extrapolating that most people leaving the law are idealists because I see the converse being true of people who stay in the law (and also considering that it seemed like nearly all of my 1L class consisted of fight-for-your-rights idealists). None of the people I know who stayed in law, non-profit law excluded, are idealists, at least no one in the younger generations. They are all people who stayed the course because they didn’t think they could make more money doing something else. These people are driven by money and for them, maybe it is a bad idea to pursue those career tracks because they would be able to stay motivated to succeed at something that runs contrary to their values, so long as it pays. Case in point, just about every biglaw senior associate/junior partner that you know. And even the steeliest of senior associates/junior partners get fed up at some point.
Also, other than maybe park ranger and marine biologist, I can think of a number of people/businesses that were successful and lucrative in each of the above listed careers. Okay, I can only think of one bluegrass bar that’s wildly successful, but bluegrass really isn’t my thing. Yeah, it’s a long shot, but there are a lot of people out there who get a thrill from going after the long shot. And innovation comes from people willing to go after the long shot.
Why are they terrible ideas? And, please, explain your answer NOT as a usual, pessimistic lawyer (i.e., “they are terrible becuase they are unrealistic and stupid and worthless and nothing is any good unless you make a lot of money and are miserable and I’m very important.”).
Looks like this was already done before this article was posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3sEsWTPfYQ.
I hadn’t seen this – it’s well-done for what it is. I just wish it weren’t framed as a “parody” or a “satire” – as though there were something “funny” about where the legal profession is, or the reality of debt-slavery. The situation is dead serious. I guess I had a more straightforward, heart-felt video in mind. But it’s a start.
Well…. you’re right all… It DOES get worse. You could have been an idealist from the start, followed your heart and been the first in your family to even go to college. You could have become a freshwater (seeing as I was from MI and we don’t have too much saltwater around) biologist have a giant pile of debt and no hope of ever making a large salary to pay it off!! Hell, you’re lucky if you can find a job in your field at all.
Great, now you’ve all ruined everything, it isn’t like I can go back to law school to make the big-bucks after reading this now is it?
There’s progress now, where there once was not. Keep it up!
I think there is still hope for young lawyers, but they may not like the answers. Do you suggest income-based repayment to them? At least do they can get a handle on their payments until they get a job that pays well? That in combination with the public-service loan forgiveness program can help them get rid of any federal loans they still have after 30 years of qualifying payments. A long time, yes. But a light at the end of the debt tunnel.
They could also complete two years of AmeriCorps, defer their loans, get the government to pay their interest, and leave with $10,000 they can use toward their debt. If they were to participate in a program like Teach for America they would make a teacher’s salary and get the education award, an even better deal!
While I agree that times are bad for lawyers and what law schools are doing to these students is reprehensible, I still believe there are ways for them to start moving in the right direction and not have go off the grid.
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“You’ve tried sleeping and pretending you don’t have to wake up.”
You can try sleeping and not wake up. It’s called suicide. No need to pretend as long as you have the guts to follow through.
Suicide is no answer to anything. Certainly not under these circumstances.
You can literally go out with a bang. If only I had the guts.
That doesn’t take guts. If you’re that unhappy, show real courage and create change for yourself. Live your own life – stop doing what you’re told. Life is a brief opportunity for joy. I mean that. Life is an incredible opportunity – something to savor. It doesn’t last very long – drink deep of it and cherish every moment.
Creating change for myself has done nothing but bring on disappointment and despair. I’ll drink deep of it if it’ll make it end faster.
I am going to community college to be a mechanic and hope i can find work in my field. But my school is paid for and I got money back after i did my fafsa and state grants and was able to buy a car. My younger sister went to law school and has a bunch of loans and cant get lawyer work. I feel bad for her now- but in the long run she will eventually be making the big bux and ill still be fixing cars, so it all evens out. At least i like doing what i do for now – it wouldve been cool to be a lawyer though